Russell Beattie

The latest spate of interesting handsets from Motorola makes me realize I need to explore what they're doing a bit more in depth - I am definitely guilty of only paying attention to Nokia releases. But Moto's been so insane over the past year, I almost gave up hope. Last summer I analyzed a bit what their direction was and bemoaned the fact that Motorola was selling their Starfish sync products to PumaTech. Moto at the time seemed to have no real direction. Here's my thoughts:

You have to wonder about Motorola... I'm pulling for them out of national pride I guess (one of the few mobile companies in the U.S.) but they just don't seem to be making the right plays. When you read about Nokia's plans, you have this native "yeah, that's interesting" feeling in your head. Even if it's nutty as the N-Gage, you still see what they're trying to do. Motorola's all over the board. They've got phones in every OS on the earth and weave from being a consumer oriented company (HelloMoto) to a business oriented one (iDEN/NextTel).

Wacky. We'll see what PumaTech does with Starfish... hopefully they'll change their name. PumaTech? Ugh.

Okay, so Moto seems to be pulling it together with the various MIDP 2.0 "v" models and even the evil-spawned MPx ones as well. This is going to be interesting to watch as it looked like at one point they were in serious trouble. But maybe this new product line will save them and stay off Samsung from claiming the number two handset manufacturer spot.

And PumaTech? Well, as I hoped, they just changed their name and are now called IntelliSync Corp. and will trade under the letters SYNC. That company is going to be one to watch, as I think every mobile manufacturer out there is going to need to license their patents and IP in one form or another.

I like the name too... I wonder if they read my weblog? ;-)

-Russ